Reuters has published an investigation into alleged schemes to deliberately disparage Tesla and shift the blame to customers for defective parts. The issue is that the company, which is headed by Elon Musk, has a long-standing tendency to claim that car owners resort to “abuse” by charging them for repairs due to breakdowns caused by substandard parts. Problems are often related to suspension and steering.

Several of the stories in the material are testimonials from Tesla owners who were told that problems with their cars were caused by previous damage or driver abuse, Engadget reports. In some cases, they have just bought cars:

Shreyansh Jain suffered suspension failure on a 2023 Tesla Model Y that he had owned for less than 24 hours. When the automaker said the cause was a lower arm separating from the steering knuckle, it expected Tesla to reimburse the cost of the repair. A service representative who inspected the car said he found “no evidence of any external damage,” but Tesla sent Jain a letter a week later avoiding the charges and pointing to “previous external damage to the front right suspension” as the cause.

Jain said he was the only person driving the car on the first day of ownership and it was accident-free before the suspension failed. “I thought: damn it, how can the metal crack like that when I know for sure that the car didn’t hit anything?”. Three months later, the repairs were complete, and Jain had to pay a $1,250 deductible (his insurance covered the rest). He says that after his insurance rates went up sharply for another car he owned.

Cincinnati surgeon Trace Curry paid $110,000 for a 2016 Tesla Model X. He replaced the control levers twice, once under warranty and the second time at his own expense. After the warranty expired, Curry paid about $10,000 for faulty suspension and drive axle parts. Then, in 2018, he replaced the front axles (under warranty); he replaced them again (for money) for $1500.

A Reuters investigation suggests Tesla knew that many of the parts requiring replacement in Curry’s Model X — the control arms, suspension and front axles — had a high failure rate.

Andrew Landin was driving his wife’s 2018 Model 3 in August when the car’s power steering failed when he hit a police officer. The Santa Rosa, Calif., resident said a Tesla service manager told him the power steering connector had corroded — and attributed it to the car wash, which the worker referred to as a known problem.

Landide paid $4,400 out of pocket to replace the steering rack and wiring harness, allegedly thanks to his decision to visit the car wash. “This is the only car I’ve ever heard of where a car wash can damage the wiring,” he told a Tesla manager. Landid described the employee’s response as follows:

All I can tell you is that we are not a 100-year-old company like GM and Ford. We haven’t fixed the bugs yet.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has been investigating Tesla’s front link (suspension part) in the Model S and X since 2020, and in July began looking into power steering failures in the 2023 Model 3 and Model Y year year